JERUSALEM (JTA) — The monument commemorating Jewish victims of the Babi Yar massacre in Kiev was desecrated for the fifth time in about a year.
Swastikas drawn on the monument were discovered last week by a delegation from the Shorashim organization, which helps immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union clarify their Jewish status in dealing with the Chief Rabbinate. The group was visiting the memorial as part of a trip to Ukraine to inaugurate its offices in Dnepropetrovsk.
“The swastikas have increased our resolve and sense of urgency to keep promoting the activity in which we are engaged,” said Rabbi David Stav, head of the Tzohar rabbinical organization, which established Shorashim in 2005 with the support of the Harry A. Triguboff Foundation in Israel.
The memorial was vandalized in April, apparently to coincide with the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, and on Jan. 27, International Holocaust Memorial Day. In 2014, the monument was targeted three times.
Some 33,771 Jews were killed in a two-day massacre at the Babi Yar ravine in September 1941.
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